


loud and often (the way i do)

by hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles)



Series: romance and nibblies [5]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Unapologetic softness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 01:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18885631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huddersandhiddles/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: “You use that word a lot.”“What word?” Patrick asks.“That one.” There’s only a trace of his usual emphatic tone buried under the tired, slurry sound of it. “The L one.”





	loud and often (the way i do)

**Author's Note:**

> Set prior to "Singles Week."
> 
> [Based on an anonymous ask on tumblr.](https://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com/post/184990545469/i-was-just-thinking-about-when-patrick-told-david)

The first hint of hazy morning sunlight is beginning to wash across the night, the sky just tilting from deepest black into navies and purples, as Patrick watches David’s smiling mouth split into a tremendous yawn. It’s early, or rather terribly late, and they’ve spent the whole glorious night tucked beneath the blankets together, conversation shared back and forth across the span of their pillows in the dark like secrets.

They do this sometimes, when Ray is out, staying up far too late, too wrapped up in their still-rare alone time to give even a single minute of it up to sleep. Sometimes there are other activities to keep them up, but this time it had just been talk. About their days. About their families. About their childhoods. About what movies David is scandalized to discover Patrick has never seen. About the everyday experiences Patrick is shocked to find David’s never had. About Patrick’s passion for baseball and David’s passion for pizza. About every single thing under the sun and nothing at all, just talking to talk because there’s still so much to know about each other and they’re both endlessly excited to learn.

It reminds Patrick a bit of the kinds of sleepovers he’d had as a child—two boys too excited by reliving the day’s adventures, too thrilled by the prospect of what tomorrow might hold to let sleep wrap them in its soothing grasp. Every time that he and David laugh, he half expects his mom to burst in and tell them to be quiet and go to sleep.

Across the bed, David yawns again, his face rumpling adorably as he tries to swallow it back, like he thinks if he tries hard enough Patrick might not notice.

Patrick reaches over to trace his thumb across the just visible curve of David’s cheek, the rise of the bone achingly familiar beneath his touch. Even with his eyes closed Patrick thinks he could recognize the feel of David’s face beneath his hands. “As much as I love staying up all night with you,” he says, “maybe we should get at least a  _little_  sleep.”

David’s eyes are already closed when he replies, “‘m not tired.”

“Sure you’re not.” Patrick tugs him closer, and David rolls over, tucking himself back into the curve of Patrick’s body, fitting them together as if they were designed that way. David is heavy and soft in his arms, all melty and moldable like wax, and Patrick doesn’t think he could ever get enough of this. He loves all of David’s energy and his enthusiasm and his larger-than-life reactions to even the most ordinary of events, but he loves this, too, these still, quiet moments that only seem to exist when they’re in each other’s arms. He rubs the cold tip of his nose against the tiny hairs at the base of David’s neck, breathing in the warm, sleepy smell of him and sending silent thanks out into the universe that he’s somehow managed to find himself here.

It’s quiet for several long, comfortable minutes, and Patrick thinks David might have actually drifted off, but then he says, his voice heavy with sleep, “You use that word a lot.”

“What word?” Patrick asks.

“ _That_ one.” There’s only a trace of his usual emphatic tone buried under the tired, slurry sound of it. “The L one.”

Patrick has to rouse himself enough to think back through the last few minutes and figure out what David’s talking about.

Finally he finds it. “Love?”

“Yeah. That one.”

He looks at the cool, pre-dawn light just lining the edge of David’s neck, soft and silver like the rim of a cloud, and wonders what it means that he won’t say it even in reference.  _The L word_. Like it’s too big to say properly.

Patrick swallows down the sour taste that thought drags up into the back of his throat.

Normally, he might not have the courage to ask: there’s a pinched, painful look David gets when he talks about his past that makes it hard for Patrick to question him about it, not wanting him to relive things better left forgotten. But here in the downy warmth of his bed, in this soft space between sleep and waking, he finds it doesn’t take as much strength to get the words past where they would normally stick in his throat.

“Do you... not use it?”

David’s chest rises and falls steadily beneath Patrick’s hand several times before he answers. “Not the way you do.”

“The way I do,” he repeats, uncertain what exactly that means.

There’s a sleepy little sigh against the pillow, and Patrick waits for David to find the words. Sometimes it takes him a while, when they have talks like this, but he always does. “Like it’s comfortable,” he says finally. “Like it isn’t hard for you.”

Patrick’s hand slips higher on David’s chest, pressing right over the slow, even beat of his heart, and he holds David impossibly closer. He’s known from the start that all of this is hard for David. Affection. Relationships. Happiness. He knows that David struggles to let himself feel worthy of it all, to feel comfortable giving it where other people can see, and Patrick’s heart aches for him that he’s been in situations that taught him he couldn’t have this, that it couldn’t be easy to just love someone and be loved back.

“I don’t say it much,” David admits, his quiet confession almost entirely muffled by the bedding as he sinks further toward sleep, so that Patrick has to strain to hear him. “Ever. Or hardly ever.” After a tiny huff of a chuckle, so soft it almost sounds more like a snore, he adds, “Yelled it at a Mariah Carey concert once.”

Patrick nuzzles his nose harder against David’s neck, wraps his arms tighter around David’s ribs. The Mariah Carey part is undoubtedly true, he’s sure, but the rest of it leaves a hollow ache in his belly. He knows David definitely wouldn’t have said those words to any of his exes. They’ve had enough of those conversations for him to be certain of that. And for him to be certain that none of them were worthy of it. But surely David must have said it more than just to his pop idol.

“You don’t say it to your family?”

That gets a lazy, breathy laugh that Patrick can feel in the rise and rattle of David’s chest beneath his hand. “Definitely not.”

Patrick frowns at that—he knows that the Roses aren’t the most emotionally demonstrative of families, but he hadn’t imagined that they don’t ever say that they love each other. He talks to his own parents at least once a week, every phone call ending with those three words. That’s always been the way of things, and it’s hard for him to picture being part of a family where that isn’t normal. “Never? Not even when you were a kid?”

David shrugs a little beneath his arm, the movement slow and his words following even slower. “Not really. Think I’ve said it to them… twice.”

“And that’s it?” Patrick asks, trying to keep his tone light and free of judgment. If he’s judging anyone here, it isn’t David—it’s everyone he’s ever loved, everyone who’s ever loved him, everyone who’s never bothered to say it, who’s never loved him long enough or hard enough or steadily enough to create a place where he felt comfortable saying it to them.

“That’s it,” David mumbles, wriggling to try to settle somehow closer into the cradle of Patrick’s body.

Three times, Patrick thinks. By his own account, David has said those words only three times in his entire life, and Patrick thinks his heart might crack into three pieces to match. He wonders then how many times David’s been told. How many times has he been told that he’s loved? It can’t have been many, if he’s had so few reasons to say it back. How can no one have given this beautiful, sweet, brilliant man all the love and affection he so clearly deserves? Not his exes. Not his friends. Not even his own family.

And the thing is, David  _is_  loved. Patrick knows he is. He can see it in the way Johnny still watches Patrick a little too closely sometimes after the incident with Rachel last month, like he’s afraid there are more skeletons waiting to jump out of Patrick’s closet. He can see it in the way Moira barges into David’s motel room every half hour as if she needs to be sure he’s still there. He can see it in the way Alexis texts him sometimes at night when David is a little too lost inside his own head, a not-so-subtle plea to help drag him back up out of the darkness. They love him, even if they don’t tell him.

Patrick does, too.

He loves the way David’s face lights up when he talks about something he really cares about, like a new product line for the store or his favorite sweaters or the importance of a nightly skin care regimen. He loves the way David takes care of his family, even if he’d never admit it. He loves the way a good pastry can change David’s entire day. He loves David’s neverending sarcasm and his quick wit and his growing willingness to embrace his own joy. He loves that they can be silly together and they can be soft together and they can be sharp together, and how all of it only ever feels like a gift, the chance to experience life—the whole, jumbled, ridiculous, infuriating, heartbreaking, delightful, incredible mess of it—hand in hand and side by side.

Patrick has known for months that he is completely and madly in love with David. But he’s been trying to wait for David to say it first, a bit afraid that if it were to go the other way, he might scare David off a bit.

But if David has only said those three words a total of three times in his life, Patrick might be waiting an awfully long time. He’d honestly wait a lifetime if he had to, but now he knows there’s another solution. A better solution.

Just say it.

Say it loud, and say it often. Say it to David in the soft, quiet space of the morning. Say it against all the sharp edges and gentle curves of his body in the pleasurable dark. Whisper it in his ear like a secret. Shout it from the roof like a public declaration. Build a space, build _a life_  where he knows without a single doubt that he is loved. That he is worthy of love. That he is so deeply and wholly loved that the sheer magnitude of the feeling is terrifying and thrilling and thoroughly transformative. That Patrick will never, could never be the same again for having loved him and been loved by him. Because Patrick knows, even if David hasn’t said it, whether it takes him another five months or another fifty years to manage to say it, that David does love him. So what is there to be afraid of?

Just say it.

Start now.

The words are there on his tongue, slipping their way toward his lips, when David’s chest rumbles with a snore, and Patrick huffs out a laugh, the built-up anticipation of the moment rolling out of him with each happy breath. 

Okay, so maybe not  _right_  now, he thinks. But soon. 

Sometime today perhaps, after they manage to crawl out of bed and drag themselves into work, still exhausted from being up all night. Maybe in the middle of the afternoon rush, or maybe when they fall back into bed at the end of the day, exhausted and satisfied. Soon. 

A moment is going to present itself, and Patrick is going to take the chance to say those three big little words. And however it goes will be fine because the most important thing is that David knows. That Patrick is going to spend the rest of his life making sure that David never forgets just how loved he is. That he can say it, too, as many or as few times as he wants, and Patrick will always be here either way, loving him right back.

He buries his face into the curve of David’s neck and closes his eyes, warm and so far beyond happy to be here in his bed with the man he loves sleeping in his arms.

Outside, the first streaks of pink and tangerine blossom across the morning sky. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [wild-aloof-rebel](http://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com) (my Schitt's Creek blog) or [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com) (my main).


End file.
